The National Marine Fisheries Service is proposing, under the Endangered Species Act, a rule to designate and authorize the release of a “nonessential experimental population” of Upper Columbia River spring chinook salmon in the Okanogan River subbasin, and to establish a limited set of take prohibitions.
U.S. commercial fishermen landed 9.6 billion pounds of fish and shellfish in 2012, valued at $5.1 billion, according to Fisheries of the United States 2012, an annual report released this week by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service.
During the week of Nov. 4, biologists with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife will be surveying 18 miles of McDermitt Creek looking for and removing non-native rainbow and brook trout – part of an eight-year effort to restore native Lahontan cutthroat trout to this remote watershed in southeast Oregon.
A relatively high crop of sockeye salmon spawners returning to central Idaho will soon be sharing the task of recovering a species that 20 years ago was all but extinct.
As of Sunday, a total of 23,332 adult fall chinook salmon, and 2,588 jacks, have been harvested this year in the mid-Columbia River’s Hanford Reach, which stretches from Richland, Wash., up to central Washington’s Priest Rapids Dam.
Yakama Nation Fisheries biologists on Wednesday begin releasing approximately 280 “reconditioned” adult steelhead into the Yakima River basin so that the fish – called kelt – can select mates and spawn again.
In somewhat of a turnabout, James W. Nass, the Oregon Court of Appeals’ appellate commissioner, in an order issued Tuesday denied a request from commercial fishing interests that implementation of new Columbia River fishing rules adopted by the state of Oregon be stayed while legal arguments play out.
The eggs of endangered Kootenai River white sturgeon are less likely to hatch on some of the surfaces that have been made more common by human, or anthropogenic, changes on the river, a new U.S. Geological Survey report has found.
Chinook salmon fishing will end on the Snake and Clearwater rivers Thursday, October 31 – except a short reach on the Snake River below Hells Canyon Dam, which closes November 17.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council and staff earlier this month began discussions on how the organization’s fish and wildlife “program” might be amended while taking into account disparate views on topics ranging from hydro system spill for salmon passage to the role of hatcheries in fish recovery schemes to climate change and invasive species to providing upstream passage at dams that have long blocked access to historic habitat.
NOAA Fisheries this fall passed out kudos earlier this month to a voluntary program developed collaboratively by state and local entities to react to water flow issues in north-central Oregon’s Fifteenmile Creek watershed in an attempt to protect summer steelhead stocks that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife on Wednesday opened sport fishing for hatchery steelhead on the mainstem upper Columbia River and in central Washington tributaries, the Wenatchee, Icicle, Methow and Okanogan rivers, until further notice.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has completed compilation of preliminary values for the 2013 commercial salmon fishery. Powered by a record pink salmon harvest of 219 million fish, this year’s harvest ranks as the second most valuable on record.
It’s taken more than two decades to set the stage — via habitat restoration and river flow guarantees — for a planned reintroduction of spring chinook salmon, a species extirpated 75 years ago, in northwest Oregon’s Walla Walla River.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Tuesday moved forward a proposal from the Yakama Nation that would ultimately involve the spending of nearly $9 million to build hatchery facilities aimed at advancing efforts to rebuild coho salmon returns in central Washington’s upper Yakima River basin.
The upper Willamette River coho salmon run, which returned record high numbers in 2009 and 2010, is on the fast track again with large counts, in relative sense, surging upstream past Portland this year.
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission during its on Oct. 4 in Newport approved a new fishing endorsement that will be required for anglers targeting salmon, steelhead and sturgeon on the Columbia and Snake rivers, and their tributaries, beginning Jan. 1, 2014.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has released a draft environmental impact report for a conservation fish hatchery to assist with the restoration of salmon runs in the San Joaquin River.
Work done to reintroduce salmon and steelhead to the upper reaches of central Oregon’s Deschutes River basin has shown progress, with the first adult returns in more than 40 y ears showing up at the bottom of the Pelton-Round Butte three-dam complex in 2011 and again in 2012.
The 2013 return of fall chinook salmon to the Columbia River has continued at overwhelming, record numbers but, for whatever reason, steelhead and coho salmon numbers remain well below recent averages.
Oregon and Washington health officials this week issued fish consumption advisories for certain species from two sections of the Columbia River due to elevated levels of mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) found in fish tissue.
Updates created his week based on actual dam counts and other information peg the 2013 forecast for the fall chinook return to the mouth of the Columbia River at 1.2 million fish, which would be a record dating back to at least the early 1940s, and likely beyond.
A modern-day record fall chinook spawning run up the Columbia and Snake rivers is, obviously, providing huge bounty for fishermen — sport, commercial, tribal.
Southeast Washington and much of the inland Northwest has sweated through a hotter than normal summer season and has been, until very recently, perspiring about the fate of the Snake River fall chinook salmon run.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is now more than three-quarters finished with a 10-year project aimed at treating alpine lakes above the South Fork Flathead River drainage to purge the presence of non-native trout.
NOAA Fisheries has decided that it will largely stay the course with its plan to assure Columbia/Snake River salmon and steelhead stocks are not jeopardized by the existence and operation of the federal Columbia River Power system.
Soaring fish ladder counts of spawners and near-record sport catches prompted federal, state and tribal fisheries officials Tuesday to raise return forecasts for 2013 adult fall chinook salmon well beyond the best of modern-day levels.
More upriver fall chinook salmon are returning to the Columbia River than any time in the past 75 years, so Washington and Oregon fishery managers are expanding sport fishing options below Bonneville Dam beginning today, Sept. 13.
About 150 state, federal and tribal officials and several local neighbors, gathered Friday, Sept. 6, to mark the completion of the new Springfield Hatchery.
The $13.5 million facility will be capable of producing up to 1 million juvenile Snake River sockeye salmon annually for release in the Sawtooth Basin of central Idaho, the headwaters of the Salmon River.
The Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribal Council is recommending that the most aggressive option for netting lake trout on Flathead Lake be adopted after a final round of public comment.
A seven-member citizen working group organized by Washington and Oregon departments of fish and wildlife will meet to review spring chinook harvest and allocation at a public meeting in The Dalles, Ore., on Monday, Sept. 16.
Fishery officials are not quite ready to declare that this year’s upriver fall chinook salmon return to the Columbia River is early arriving, or if it is even bigger than predicted in a preseason forecast.
But… the stocks’ presence this far into the season is large.
Challenges to the legality of mainstem Columbia River gill-net fishing restrictions recently approved by the states of Oregon and Washington continue through court processes, with Washington’s Thurston County Superior Court on Aug. 23 dismissing a request that the new policy be thrown out.
People are now used to long-term weather forecasts that predict what the coming winter may bring. But University of Washington researchers and federal scientists have developed the first long-term forecast of conditions that matter for Pacific Northwest fisheries.
A team of scientists and other experts is investigating the mechanics of sudden, dramatic changes in our oceans. That should help us to avoid these tipping points—or to recover once they’ve been crossed.
Federal “action” agencies Friday afternoon (Aug. 23) made public a 300-page document that outlines hundreds of actions, most focused on habitat restoration, that they say will be implemented over the next five years to avoid jeopardizing the survival of 13 salmon and steelhead stocks native to the Columbia-Snake river basin that are now listed for protections under the Endangered Species Act.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife this week released a “determination of non-significance” under the State Environmental Policy Act that says development of a new commercial fishing area along the lower Columbia River’s north shore at Cathlamet will likely not have a significant adverse impact on the environment.
Great fishing for both anglers and gill-netters in the early fall season has prompted Oregon and Washington fisheries managers to take a conservative approach as the Columbia River’s fall chinook return moves toward what is normally its peak period.
Columbia River fishery managers met Monday to review the summer steelhead run status and members agreed to downsize the return estimate for the “A” — the small steelhead component of the run — to 212,000 fish.
Fishermen from the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama tribes took to the Columbia River this week for the first gill-net fishery of the 2013 fall commercial season, targeting a budding run of fall chinook salmon run, steelhead and the early parts of the coho salmon run.
Officials will gather just outside Springfield on the morning of Sept. 6 to mark the completion of a new hatchery that is intended to boost recovery of Snake River sockeye.
A total of 90 Snake River sockeye salmon spawners have been trapped as of Wednesday in central Idaho as part of the long-running program to boost production of a species that has since 1991 been listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and, during that time period, came close to extinction.
Tribal commercial fishermen are expected to begin their fall season next week targeting the tail-end of a bumper sockeye return the Columbia River and the front end of what is expected to be a strong fall chinook salmon run.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council last week recommended funding and implementation of two projects aimed at answering, in one case, a demand of the Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion and, in the other, moving forward a project aimed at restoring more normal river conditions for salmon and other species in the Yankee Fork Salmon River in central Idaho.
The Fraser River Panel met this week to review assessment data on Fraser River sockeye and pink salmon and environmental conditions in the British Columbia watershed as the abundance of summer-run sockeye remains in the lower range of pre-season expectations.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Dworshak National Fish Hatchery recently received the Department of Interior’s “Hatchery of the Year” Award as well as the Regional ‘Environmental Leadership Award’ for Green Innovation of projects implemented through the BPA Energy Efficiency Program in 2012.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Wednesday voted 6-2 to recommend that the Bonneville Power Administration continue its full contribution – about $7.5 million annually – to a program aimed at monitoring the fate of Columbia River salmon via coded wire tag technology.
Spatial diversity in the first year of life can protect an entire salmon species from the effects of large-scale forces such as climate change and the operation of hydroelectric dams, according to a new NOAA Fisheries research article published this week.
Sockeye salmon returns this year have been slightly stronger than expected overall for the Columbia River basin, though the endangered Snake River fish have passed upstream with fits and starts because of low flows and warmer than normal water temperatures.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is seeking 12 voting members for the newly created Oregon Hatchery Research Center Board.
Endangered Snake River sockeye are moving again toward their central Idaho home, some in-river and some potentially by truck, after stalling for much of this past week , apparently shying from warm water flushing down through the fish ladder at southeast Washington’s Lower Granite Dam.
Right on time, the first endangered Snake River sockeye of the 2013 completed its 900-mile journey up the Columbia, Snake and Salmon rivers this week in warm conditions, only to be welcomed by wildfire smoldering around the central Idaho hatchery where many of the fish spend their extreme youth.
There are great expectations for the late summer-fall fishing season on the Columbia River mainstem with fall chinook and coho salmon returns predicted to be at or greater than the 10-year averages, but anglers targeting steelhead trout may well face a short supply.
Anglers in central Washington have been given license to take non-native smallmouth bass and eastern brook trout, as well as native adipose-clipped rainbow trout, this summer as a means of reducing predation on freshly hatched steelhead in Salmon Creek, a tributary to the Okanogan River.
The extinction risk faced by Endangered Species Act-listed Columbia River basin “steelhead” stocks may be overestimated given the fact that the contributions of rainbow trout to species viability is not considered, according to a recently published research article.
Study of a thriving population of non-native American shad that spawns up and down the Columbia-Snake river basin could ultimately help inform efforts to revive the species in its native territory along the East Coast, according to a recently published scientific article.
A positively persistent stream of sockeye spawners passing up and over the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam has allowed sport fishing to continue (though not for “summer” chinook) on the lower river as well as tribal fishing in reservoirs upstream of the dam.
A new season opens next week up and down the Columbia River and in many tributaries with spawning fall chinook salmon becoming eligible for harvest as of Aug. 1 and a bumper crop expected to return to the Columbia-Snake system.
Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribal officials say things have changed to a point where more needs to done, including netting of non-native lake trout, to save native bull and cutthroat trout in the Flathead Lake.
Federal “action” agencies this week gave themselves, and their partners, good marks in implementing the first five years of a 10-year plan aimed at countering impacts of Columbia-Snake River dams on salmon and steelhead stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The Oregon Legislature in the final hours of its 2013 session approved a measure that when becomes law will pave the way for the state to ban most gill net use by non-tribal commercial fishermen on the lower Columbia River for the harvest of salmon and other fish species.
NOAA Fisheries this week published a “recovery plan” produced with the help of federal, state, tribal and local partners with the hope its prescribed actions will lift threatened coho, chinook and chum salmon and steelhead in the Lower Columbia River to sustainable levels that allow the stocks to be removed from the Endangered Species Act list.
Congress, in the Marine Mammal Protection Act, says that California sea lions “cannot be killed simply because they eat a few salmon,” according to a brief filed Wednesday by the Humane Society of the United States in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Oregon and Washington fishery managers decided this week that, with fish numbers –particularly those of sockeye salmon — holding strong, both sport and commercial fishermen deserved more time on the lower Columbia River mainstem.
With both sockeye and summer chinook counts at the lower Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam “tracking behind expectations,” treaty tribes scaled back commercial fishing requests to avoid impacts on, particularly, a sockeye salmon return that includes fish from the Snake River basin that are protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Parentage-based tagging (PBT) is an emerging genetic-based fish tagging method that involves genotyping hatchery broodstock.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife on Tuesday released 25,000 tiger muskie into east-central Oregon’s Phillips Reservoir in hope they’d eat down the nonnative yellow perch population that is outcompeting the local trout population.
A meandering four-mile stretch of Willow Creek, a tributary of the Grande Ronde River in eastern Oregon, is being restored to protect summer steelhead spawning and rearing habitat under conservation easements with property owners.
The Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have rolled out a draft environmental impact statement with alternative proposals for netting lake trout on Flathead Lake.
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation on Thursday served as hosts for the “First Salmon and Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony” in celebration of the opening of a new state-of-the-art hatchery at central Washington’s Chief Joseph Dam on the mid-Columbia River.
One size definitely does not fit all when it comes to assessing how to spend a limited pot of money for the marking and tagging of Columbia River basin fish for research to determine how various stocks might be better managed.
Sunday began a new season for anglers on much of the Columbia River mainstem with the target being primarily predicted strong returns of “summer” chinook and sockeye salmon, as well as steelhead.
Researchers at the University of Idaho and the U.S. Geological Survey have developed a way to identify New Zealand mudsnail infestations in their earliest stages – using only the small bits of DNA the snails shed in the water.
A legal brief filed Wednesday by the federal government insists that NOAA Fisheries “exercised sound scientific judgment in finding that certain individually identifiable California sea lions have a ‘significant negative impact on the decline or recovery’ of at-risk salmon.”
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission heard public testimony pro and con from mid-morning Thursday until past quitting time (5:30 p.m.) before opting to readopt lower Columbia River fish management rules focused on phasing out mainstem commercial gill-net fishing and shifting most of the salmon harvest allocation there to recreational fishers.
The latest forecast projects a minimum return of 115,000 upriver spring chinook adults to the Columbia River mouth. That’s still well shy of the preseason forecast of 141,400, but is a boost from a May 13 forecast of 107,500.
One and a half years after the breaching of Condit Dam on southwest Washington’s White Salmon River the future appears bright for salmon and other fish stocks restricted for more than 100 years to a relatively short strip of habitat between the hydro project and the confluence with the Columbia River.
The available options for legal relief could well have done more harm than good for wild, protected salmon and steelhead, according to a May 16 opinion and order issued by Portland U.S. District Court Judge Ancer L. Haggerty.
Record-size fish might be hard to come by, but anglers should not go home empty handed from northeast Oregon’s Wallowa Lake, where fishery officials estimate the kokanee population has ballooned from 70,000 in 2008 to more than 900,000.
The 2013 spring chinook salmon return to the Columbia-Snake river basin has lagged behind expectations, but fishing opportunities persist, targeting hatchery produced fish while attempting to hold down impacts on naturally produced segments of the stock bound for spawning areas upstream of Bonneville Dam.
Lookingglass Creek, a tributary to the Grande Ronde River at Palmer Junction in northeast Oregon, will open to fishing for hatchery spring chinook salmon “jacks,” young fish that are showing up in higher than average numbers this year in contrast to relatively low returns for their older brethren.
Recent tests of salmon from Washington’s waters show no signs of a fish virus that can be deadly to farm-raised Atlantic salmon, state, tribal and federal resource managers announced Thursday.
Representatives of state and federal agencies, utilities, local governments, academic institutions and others gathered Wednesday in Vancouver to enhance the passions, and strategic plans, for heading off an invasion of non-native zebra and/or quagga mussels.
More lamprey have been counted at Threemile Falls Dam on northeast Oregon’s Umatilla River in five days this year than in seven months in the previous two years.
Anglers have to wait awhile longer to get back out on the mainstem, but lower Columbia River commercial anglers this week got a second shot at what has been a late-arriving, and under-performing, spring chinook salmon return to the mouth of the big river.
Columbia River anglers will be allowed to catch and keep white sturgeon in the Bonneville Pool four days in June under an agreement reached Tuesday by fishery managers from Washington and Oregon.
Eighteen months of discussions — including 15 face-to-face meetings and many more conference calls — among subject matter experts and policy makers produced 16 consensus recommendations for how the tagging and marking of salmon and other fish from the Columbia River basin might be made more efficient and cost-effective.
Touched with success, Yakama Nation Fisheries efforts to build returns of once-extinct coho salmon to the mid-Columbia River region are branching out, with hopes of infusing fish into the fingertips of central Washington’s Yakima River basin.
A plan to revisit recently adopted Columbia River salmon harvest rules – which aim to phase out commercial use of gill nets on the mainstem and provide a bigger share of fish to recreational fishers — has been pushed back by the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission to allow additional time for public input.
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission Tuesday (April 30) approved a spring chinook salmon fishing season to start Saturday (May 4) on parts of the Clearwater, Salmon and Snake rivers.
Heading into the first weekend of the 2013 Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Program, early reports indicate a potential banner year for Northern Pikeminnow fishing and payouts for participating anglers, say fish managers.
A newly, and greatly, improved Minto Fish Collection Facility on western Oregon’s North Santiam River went online April 1 and fish were, more or less, standing in line for a lift into the wild fish sanctuary that awaits just upstream.
The long-held practice of sweeping in migrating subyearling fall chinook salmon at McNary Dam and barging and/or trucking them downstream past three other lower Columbia River dams during the heat of summer should be discontinued, according to a “system operational request” offered this week by federal, state and tribal “salmon managers.”
NOAA Fisheries “ignored” prior court directives last year in a making a decision that once again authorized the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington to lethally remove California sea lions that gobble up salmon in the Columbia River, according to an opening legal brief filed April 22 federal court by plaintiff Humane Society of the United States.
Sport fishing on the lower Columbia River remains closed as Oregon and Washington fishery managers await a swell of upriver spring chinook salmon that would at least give hope that the preseason forecast return of 141,400 adult fish to the mouth of the river can be achieved.
Starting May 1, anglers fishing for salmon or steelhead on the Columbia River and most of its tributaries downstream from Chief Joseph Dam will be required to use barbless hooks.
The Oregon and Washington departments of fish and wildlife have placed a trap at The Dalles Marina on the Columbia River to try to capture California sea lions that have made their way above Bonneville Dam.
Lower Columbia River spring harvest impacts on protected “upriver” spring chinook salmon are fewer than initially calculated, though not quite enough to allow sport or commercial fishers back on the water until at least next week.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in collaboration with other federal, state and tribal agencies, has released the 2012 Annual Report for the Northern Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf Population.
Fall chinook salmon emerging from central Idaho’s Clearwater River drainage may begin life under environmental conditions that prompts many to stall their journey toward the Pacific Ocean as juveniles and, as a result, return as adults in higher numbers than fish from other areas of the Snake River basin, according a recently published scientific paper from University of Idaho and NOAA Fisheries Service.
With most of the allowable Columbia River upriver spring chinook salmon catch in hand, it appears as if anglers, and commercial fishers, will be kept off the lower river for a while until the catch data and/or run-size can be re-evaluated.
“We’re making the basin better,” Lorri Bodi, the Bonneville Power Administration’s vice president for Environment, Fish and Wildlife, said Tuesday during a look back, and a look forward, at the work being done throughout the Columbia-Snake river system at the direction of the 1980 Northwest Power Act.
A fishery ecosystem plan was adopted Thursday by the Pacific Fishery Management Council with the purpose of enhancing its decision-making process with more ecosystem science.
The summer’s recreational catch quota for ocean anglers is down slightly for chinook salmon, but up just a tad from last year for coho, according to a recommendation produced this week in Portland by the Pacific Fisheries Management Council.
The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have a plan to construct and operate a hatchery that would be a key step in attempts to bring naturally spawning spring chinook back to the Walla Walla River Basin — a place they have not been for more than 75 years.
A number of Pacific lamprey passage improvements are expected to come online for this year’s spawning run with the hope of boosting survival through the Columbia-Snake river hydro system so the eel-like fish can rebuild populations in upstream habitat.
In a paper published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, researchers, using acoustic tagging and tracking technology, say they have learned that survival during the first month of life at-sea of juvenile Snake River spring chinook salmon was the same as that of a downstream population which did not first migrate through the Snake River dams.
Oregon and Washington fishery officials Wednesday opted to extend the lower Columbia River season by six fishing days after eyeing a slowly swelling fish return, and the fact that anglers so far only have an estimated 1,572 upriver spring chinook salmon in hand that count toward an early season harvest limit of 4,900 fish.
The planned April 26 Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting has been rescheduled to May 10 to allow additional time for public review of the fiscal impact statement for newly adopted Columbia River fish management and reform rules now being challenged in the state’s Court of Appeals.
A federal court judge in a March 29 injunction order put Washington and state agencies on a schedule to identify and fix any culverts in the “case area” that block access to 200 meters or more of salmon habitat.
Visiting pinnipeds, led by California sea lions, are present in what many believe are record numbers this year at a usual resting place at the Astoria, Ore., East Mooring Basin, and up the Columbia River, with relatively high concentrations as far upstream as St. Helens, Ore., located at river mile 86.
A request to stop hatchery salmon and steelhead releases this year into northwest Oregon’s Sandy River basin was denied March 21 by U.S. District Court Judge Ancer L. Haggerty.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, at least on one front this week, shifted its focus from the world’s oceans to the Columbia River where the animal protection group hopes to bring public attention to what it believes are illegal acts being carried out against marine mammals.
After an unexpected off year in 2012, fisheries experts predict that the 2013 Columbia-Snake “upriver” summer steelhead run will rise again nearer to levels enjoyed by anglers during the previous 12 years.
The Court of Appeals for the state of Oregon, amidst a swirl of participation requests and other filings, this week reaffirmed its “order of abeyance,” which allows the state of Oregon to respond to specific criticisms of newly approved fishing rules that would over the next few years largely phase out commercial gill-netting for salmon on the mainstem Columbia River.
NOAA chief Kathryn D. Sullivan in a March 18 letter provides assurances to Washington Congressman Doc Hastings that one path towards rebuilding populations of imperiled Columbia River salmon and steelhead stocks will not block, or sidetrack, another.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is seeking comments on a draft environmental assessment for the John Day Mitigation Project. The Corps proposes to construct hatchery facilities to increase the production of fall chinook salmon, as required by the Federal Columbia River Power System Biological Opinion.
A notice of appeal filed Tuesday aims to start once again legal arguments over Northwest states’ right to remove California sea lions that prey on salmon and steelhead that head up the Columbia River each spring.
The state of Oregon and NOAA Fisheries, joined by three sport fishing organizations, say that the operation of northwest Oregon’s Sandy Hatchery under newly approved federal guidelines is legal and does not jeopardize wild salmon and steelhead protected under the Endangered Act.
While litigants debate their fate, an underdetermined number of hatchery-reared spring chinook salmon smolts have escaped an impoundment on Oregon’s Bull Run River and, presumably, begun their migration toward the Pacific Ocean.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council in mid-February opened what is expected to be a continuing discussion about how, or even if, evaluations of ocean conditions can ultimately help managers in the Columbia-Snake river basin make decisions that help fish and wildlife, and salmon in particular, prosper.
Anglers fishing along the Washington coast will likely see a lower catch quota for spring chinook salmon this year, while the quota for coho is expected to be similar to last season, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced this week.
U.S. commercial and recreational saltwater fishing generated more than $199 billion in sales and supported 1.7 million jobs in the nation’s economy in 2011, according to a new economic report released by NOAA’s Fisheries Service.
Most anglers would agree that a successful fishing trip involves a certain amount of luck. One Hagerman fisherman had plenty of that when an outing to Lower Salmon Falls Reservoir resulted in a $1,000 payday from Idaho Power.
Fish conservation groups seeking a permanent end to hatchery produced salmon and steelhead in northwest Oregon’s Sandy River basin have asked a federal judge, in the near term, to preempt the planned release of several hundred fish later this month.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission on March 1 adopted numerous changes to sportfishing rules, including a paring down of the white sturgeon catch limit and the elimination of catch restrictions for non-native predators that gobble up protected, and non-listed, juvenile salmon and steelhead.
A decade of working together with state and federal fish agencies and two Northwest tribes under Habitat Conservation Plans for Rocky Reach and Rock Island dams has achieved the goal that these dams have no net impact on the salmon and steelhead migrating past them, said Chelan PUD this week in a press release.
Several dead burbot, sealed in a plastic bag, were recently discovered along Highway 16 south of Emmett, Idaho.
Thanks to tagging and marking, the behavior, fate and other facts of fish life are charted in the Columbia/Snake river basin, and Pacific Ocean, exhaustively — perhaps more so than anywhere else.
At its conclusion, Northwest Power and Conservation Council member Phil Rockefeller said a recent daylong discussion “has stretched my thinking” about how information gleaned from the ocean might be used to benefit salmon recovery/management in the freshwater Columbia River system.
Fishing prospects this summer off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington would appear to be quite rosy, due to forecasts of large runs of fall chinook headed to the Columbia River, the Klamath River and other spawning destinations.
Fishing prospects look bright this year for chinook in Washington’s ocean waters and the Columbia River, according to preseason salmon forecasts released today at a public meeting in Olympia.
Fisheries biologists from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation were scheduled March 9 to present findings from a steelhead radio tracking study at the Pendleton Sportsman show.
Beginning today (March 1), Washington anglers will for the second year in a row get a late-winter shot at harvesting fin-clipped steelhead in the Methow River and, as a result, help weed out hatchery fish that might ultimately stray onto spawning grounds where wild, protected fish are completing their life cycle.
Idaho Fish and Game hosted a meeting in Priest River on February 28 to share information and answer questions about the future management of the fishery in Priest Lake.
The prospects for late summer fishing on the mainstem Columbia River look great with a forecast return of fall chinook salmon projected to be the highest since 2004, and the “upriver bright” portion of that run expected to be the biggest ever.
An air, ground and underwater effort this past fall produced the third largest count yet of fall chinook salmon redds (nests) in what is a 25-year record of intensive surveys conducted in the Snake River drainage and most tributaries above Lower Granite Dam and downstream of the Hells Canyon Complex.
A Portland-based U.S. District judge on Feb. 15 dismissed a lawsuit that had asked the court to declare illegal a federally approved program to remove, lethally or otherwise, California sea lions that have in recent years made a habit of coursing up the Columbia River to feed on salmon protected under the Endangered Species Act.
An Oregon Court of Appeals order issued Feb. 11 says the implementation of new Oregon rules aimed at phasing out the use of gill nets on the lower Columbia River mainstem, and giving recreational anglers a larger share of salmon catch allocations, must be forestalled while legal arguments on the issue play out.
For the second straight year, state and tribal fishery managers are joining forces to remove invasive, non-native northern pike from Box Canyon Reservoir on the Pend Oreille River in northeast Washington.
When migrating, sockeye salmon typically swim up to 4,000 miles into the ocean and then, years later, navigate back to the upstream reaches of the rivers in which they were born to spawn their young. Scientists, the fishing community and lay people have long wondered how salmon find their way to their home rivers over such epic distances.
Congressman Doc Hastings in a Feb. 4 letter to the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane Lubchenco, expresses concerns over a contract the agency has signed with entities to conduct “closed interviews” with individuals about their opinions of ongoing salmon recovery activities in the Columbia River basin.
Fisheries managers have announced that the popular spring chinook fishery on central Oregon’s Deschutes River will not open in 2013 due to anticipated low returns of both hatchery produced and wild fish.
Coho salmon returns this late summer to the Columbia River and to Northwest coastal streams should be up a bit this year according to a preseason ocean abundance forecast completed this week by the Oregon Production Index Technical Team.
A recently published research article backs up previous work in suggesting that avian predators such as Caspian terns and double-crested cormorants prey particularly on weak juvenile steelhead, and salmon, migrating downstream in the Snake and Columbia rivers.
A coalition of conservation organizations last week filed a formal 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for what the groups say were violations of the Endangered Species Act in the agency’s final declaration of “critical habitat” needed to sustain endangered mountain caribou that roam northeast Washington and northern Idaho.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission will next week ponder nearly 70 proposed sportfishing rule changes, including one that is intended to boost the harvest of walleye, smallmouth bass and channel catfish in the mid and upper Columbia and lower Snake rivers and thus reduce predation on protected salmon and steelhead.
Fishery managers from Oregon and Washington on Wednesday set spring chinook salmon seasons for the Columbia River that will allow anglers to roam up and downriver from the Portland-Vancouver area, but in doing so risk a somewhat earlier closure.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game is set to launch a comprehensive study of the lake trout population in the northern panhandle’s Priest Lake as the first step toward a better understanding of how and why the big, non-native “mackinaw” thrive.
About 60,000 chinook salmon fry died last week as a result of a water supply problem at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s McCall Fish Hatchery in the west central part of the state.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today, in response to a court-ordered deadline, that it is seeking information from the scientific community and the public on a proposal to protect the North American wolverine as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
Oregon and Washington fishery managers on Wednesday established new rules for the white sturgeon fishery that will reduce harvest rates for the fourth straight year for the lower Columbia River (146 river miles from Bonneville Dam to the river mouth).
It is expected to be slim pickings this year for lower Columbia River fishers who like to pursue white sturgeon.
And there will be no pickings at all for eulachon, commonly known as smelt.
The Washington State Salmon Recovery Funding Board last week released its 2012 biennial “State of the Salmon in Watersheds” report and with it launched a new, interactive web site that allows people to see how salmon are doing in their community’s streams and rivers.
A team of scientists from NOAA and Oregon State University has found that a wide range of biological and environmental indicators from the Pacific Ocean are better predictors of adult salmon returns to the Columbia River than local or regional physical indicators.
Salmon runs are notoriously variable: strong one year, and weak the next. New research shows that the same may be true from one century to the next.
Scientists in the past 20 years have recognized that salmon stocks vary not only year to year, but also on decades-long time cycles. One example is the 30-year to 80-year booms and busts in salmon runs in Alaska and on the West Coast driven by the climate pattern known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission Saturday, Jan. 12, unanimously adopted a policy that establishes a new management framework for salmon fisheries on the lower Columbia River that allocates a larger share of harvest to sport fishers and phases out the use of commercial gill nets on the mainstem.
A U.S.-Canada agreement to renew and update joint operations of Osoyoos Lake was finalized this week with the official endorsement of the state of Washington.
Fisheries managers should sharpen their ability to spot environmental conditions that hamper or help fish stocks, rather than assuming that having a certain abundance of fish assures how much can be sustainably harvested.
NOAA’s Fisheries Service announced Thursday that under Endangered Species Act rules it is recognizing as “nonessential experimental” steelhead stocks that have in recent years been reintroduced to historic spawning grounds in the upper reaches of central Oregon’s Deschutes River.
Attorneys representing commercial fishing interests on Jan. 4 filed a “petition for judicial review” asking the Oregon Court of Appeals to rule as invalid a “radical reallocation plan” adopted Dec. 7 by the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission that would boost anglers’ share of the salmon harvest in the lower Columbia River and ban commercial gill-net use.
Declining Pacific lamprey returns to the Columbia River system have mirrored the population status of the fish species the so-called “eels” rely on as their host during an ocean sojourn, according to research results published last month in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.
The odds are long, but Kootenai Tribe of Idaho biologists and others are hoping this year to witness a rebirth of burbot reproductive activity in north Idaho’s Kootenai River-reservoir-tributary system.
After a yearlong closure, anglers, beginning Saturday, will again be able to stalk southwest Washington’s lower White Salmon River in hope of hooking winter and summer steelhead making their spawning journey.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission will consider adopting broad-based changes in policies governing salmon and sturgeon fisheries on the lower Columbia River at a public meeting Jan. 11-12 in Olympia.
The 42 parties that originally signed the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement early this week approved a first amendment to the settlement that, among other things, extends by two years the time allowed to gain congressional authorization, and funding to implement restoration actions.
West-central Oregon’s Fall Creek Reservoir took a fall last week as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dam operators implemented an operation intended restore, if only briefly, a stream flow that helps protected juvenile spring chinook salmon find their way downstream and, ultimately, to the Pacific Ocean.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission, meeting in Tumwater, heard public testimony Dec. 14-15 on a set of recommendations to restructure salmon and sturgeon fisheries on the lower Columbia River.
Oregon and Washington officials on Tuesday approved a white sturgeon fishery on the Columbia from Bonneville Dam up to The Dalles Dam that opens Jan. 1 and continues until Feb. 10 or until 1,150 fish are harvested, whichever comes first.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced this week that it will conduct a review of the status of the northern Idaho’s southern Selkirk Mountains population of woodland caribou in response to a petition to remove the mammal from Endangered Species Act protection.
Planning and implementation is going well, yet a “more robust discussion is needed” to cement efforts to recover depleted Columbia River salmon and steelhead populations that are now protected under the Endangered Species Act, according to Barry Thom, deputy administrator for NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Region.
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission on Dec. 6 approved by a 4-2 vote a new management framework for Columbia River fisheries that allocates more salmon for the sport fishery and plans a gradual transition away from non-tribal, commercial gill-net use on the river mainstem.
The Western Environmental Law Center, on behalf of the McKenzie Flyfishers, on Nov. 6 sent a 60-day notice of intent to sue the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife over the operation of two fish hatcheries in west-central Oregon’s McKenzie River basin.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Tuesday gave the go-ahead for the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho to proceed with final design and begin construction on a $16.2 million project to upgrade an existing white sturgeon hatchery at Bonners Ferry, Idaho, and build a new hatchery upstream to support both sturgeon and burbot restoration goals.
Lower Columbia River chum salmon are riding high this late fall season as a series of wet storms continue to pelt the region, filling up rivers and forcing dam managers to flush water downstream in unseasonably large volumes.
Five years after it was built, a fish processing facility owned by four Northwest tribes, is still awaiting wastewater test results that will satisfy the city of White Salmon and the Washington Department of Ecology.
As Oregon and Washington consider banning gill nets from the lower Columbia River, some worry the move could have unintended and negative consequences on salmon fisheries in Idaho and eastern Washington.
Food webs needed by young salmon in the Columbia River basin are likely compromised in places, something that should be considered when prioritizing expensive restoration activities aimed at rebuilding endangered runs.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire signed an executive order this week noting recommendations from her Blue Ribbon Panel on Ocean Acidification to address the growing problem of ocean acidification in Washington, which threatens the state’s shellfish resources and its $270 million shellfish industry.
Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell this week announced that his Fiscal Year 2014 budget will contain $10 million for the first component of a five-year, $30 million comprehensive Chinook Salmon Research Initiative.
A contract was awarded Nov. 8 to Normandeau Associates Inc. to conduct adult fish counting services at eight mainstem Columbia and Snake river dams operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
A work group comprised of Oregon and Washington fish and wildlife commissioners on Thursday agreed on recommendations that would change state management of lower Columbia River fisheries by eliminating the use commercial gill nets by non-tribal fishers on the mainstem lower Columbia River.
Anglers on north Idaho’s vast Lake Pend Oreille will next year likely get to target kokanee for the first time since 2000 when fisheries for the land-locked sockeye salmon were closed because of plummeting populations.
Critiques of the process are well taken and are helping move toward the goal of satisfying requirements that the federal Columbia/Snake river hydro system avoid jeopardizing the survival of salmon and steelhead stocks that are protected under the Endangered Species Act, notes a brief filed Nov. 9 by the U.S. Department of Justice in Oregon’s U.S. District Court.
A new report suggests that climate change is causing additional stress to many western rangelands, and as a result land managers should consider a significant reduction, or in some places elimination of livestock and other large animals from public lands.
Idaho Power Company biologists have completed the first of a three-year survey of white sturgeon and report a diverse population of healthy fish in the lower Snake River between the utility’s Hells Canyon Dam and Lower Granite Dam, which is owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
One effort to end commercial gill-net fishing on the lower Columbia River came to an end during Tuesday’s general election with two-thirds of Oregon’s voters saying no on Ballot Initiative 81.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has kicked off a public scoping process to determine how to best manage a large salmon-munching colony of double-crested cormorants nesting on East Sand Island in the Columbia River estuary.
Legal adversaries say that implementation of a federal Columbia/Snake river salmon protection plan is lagging, not producing the intended benefits and that the agencies are plunging ahead without acknowledging that significant changes are needed to meet the requirements of both fish and the law.
The Oregon and Washington fish and wildlife commissions are scheduled to meet next week to discuss, among other topics, proposals to restructure salmon and sturgeon fisheries on the lower Columbia River, including a proposal to steer commercial gill-nets away from mainstem fishing areas and into side channels.
Gill-net opponents and the Oregon governor say their plans for banning the use of commercial gill-nets on the lower Columbia River doesn’t affect treaty tribes.
But the tribes dependent on salmon and steelhead returns to feed their members are wary.
Idaho Fish and Game planned to stock more than 250 steelhead in the Boise River Thursday, Nov. 1 — the first of two planned releases during the next few weeks.
Snake River yearling spring chinook salmon did well this year, surviving their run down the Federal Columbia River Power System gauntlet toward the Pacific Ocean at a rate exceeded only by the 2006 migration, according to preliminary data compiled in a memo from NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center to the agency’s Bruce Suzumoto, Northwest Region assistant regional administrator, Hydropower Division.
A recently completed independent scientific review gave high marks to the most recent annual report on the long-running Comparative Survival Study, saying it is “well organized and well written” and presents data that is “valuable” for managers attempting to improve Columbia River conditions for imperiled salmon and steelhead.
Tribal and federal leaders challenged participants at the Future of Our Salmon Conference to work together and develop a Northwest hatchery strategy for Columbia Basin salmon populations that both provides fish for Indian and non-Indian fisheries and restores depleted stocks.
A Sandy Hatchery operation proposed by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife that includes the trapping of hatchery and wild spring chinook salmon and, presumably, the safe release of the naturally produced fish so that they can continue upstream to spawn, has gained the qualified endorsement of the federal agency charged with enforcing the Endangered Species Act.
Adult sockeye salmon returns to central Idaho’s high country flagged this year as compared to a recent series of modern-time annual records, but the 2012 run still ranks as the sixth best since a hatchery captive broodstock program was launched in the early 1990s to save a species near extinction.
The Columbia River Compact on Oct. 15 approved three 12-hour non-tribal commercial fisheries in the lower Columbia River to sweep up the “crumbs” of fall chinook and coho salmon runs that are fast disappearing upriver.
The Washington/Oregon Columbia River Fishery Management Workgroup, created upon direction from Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, met Oct. 18 to discuss rulemaking options to reform commercial and sport fisheries on the lower Columbia River (the area downstream of Bonneville Dam) — a process that could include the eventual removal of commercial gill nets from the mainstem.
Wild tule fall chinook salmon are spreading out in southeast Washington’s White Salmon River, building redds (gravelly nests) and planting eggs in a part of the river that has been closed off to them for 100 years.
So-called “invasive” or “nonnative” species – plants and animals that cause disruptions in the natural way of things when introduced to a new environment – have policy makers and scientists struggling for answers.
Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and its member tribes – the Umatilla, Yakama, Warm Springs, and Nez Perce – will bring together tribal, state, and federal fisheries co-managers, environmental groups, and the interested public to the second Future of Our Salmon Conference.
The Coastal Conservation Association, Washington Chapter, has announced that Nello Picinich will lead the organization following the resignation of executive Director Bryan Irwin three weeks ago.
“Performance standard testing” at The Dalles, McNary and Bonneville dams on the lower Columbia River showed marked improvements in survival of outmigrating juvenile spring chinook and steelhead during 2011, according to the annual progress report released Sept. 28 by federal agencies engaged in efforts to boost the status of 13 salmon and steelhead stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Hatcheries can be an effective tool for rebuilding abundance and productivity of chinook salmon without impacting wild fish depending on the species, perhaps, and the protocols involved, according to research published Monday in the journal Molecular Ecology.
On Thursday, Sept 27 a fish biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed the first observed spawning sockeye salmon in the Metolius River in more than 45 years.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will accept public comments through Dec. 15 on a variety of proposed changes to the state’s fishing regulations, including one that would remove daily bag limits on nonnative fish species such as smallmouth bass and walleye that prey on imperiled native salmon and steelhead.
The lead paragraph in a Sept. 27 CBB article about the Yakama Nation sockeye salmon reintroduction program at Lake Cle Elum incorrectly stated that 1,000 spawners had been transported to the lake this summer. The correct total is 10,000.
Oregon and Washington fishery managers decided Tuesday that the white sturgeon retention season for anglers on the lower Columbia River upstream of the Wauna powerlines will not open Oct. 20 as planned.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has extended the public comment period on updated draft management plans that will be used by the agency to operate several hatchery programs in the lower Columbia River.
The 2012 upriver bright fall chinook return looks to be somewhat below the preseason expectations but still well above recent 10-year average.
Columbia River mainstem commercial fishers, as well as anglers, are now chasing the tail end of an upriver fall chinook run that appears to be well above the 10-year average in terms of adult returns, though somewhat below expectations.
Overharvest of cougars can increase negative encounters between the predator and humans, livestock and game, according to a 13-year Washington State University research project. Based on this, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is implementing a new cougar management plan.
After a daylong discussion involving scientists, in the field biologists, policy makers and others the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and staff have suggested a path forward for addressing predatory effects on the Columbia River basin’s salmon, sturgeon and lamprey populations.
New programs to develop methods for the hatchery culture of Pacific lamprey are under way in on either side of the Cascade Mountains in Washington with the goal of creating a tool for restoring depleted stocks of a fish of great cultural and environmental importance in the Columbia River basin.
Anglers will be allowed to retain adult hatchery chinook salmon along the 70-mile stretch of the lower Columbia River during a weeklong pilot fishery that started Monday and runs through Sunday, Sept. 16.
The Stop Gillnets Now Coalition and the Coastal Conservation Association announced Monday that they would end their campaign in support of Oregon ballot measure 81 and instead focus on efforts to assure approval of a plan outlined by Gov. John Kitzhaber to end non-tribal commercial gill-net fishing for salmon in the Columbia River.
Data compiled by NOAA’s Fisheries Service strongly suggest that West Coast trawl fishermen are becoming more confident about a new fishery management system put in place early last year, and both they and the fish stocks they target are benefiting.
The battle over the use of gill-nets to capture saleable salmon from the Columbia River continues this year on at least two fronts.
Fisheries officials corralled a total of 34 endangered Snake River sockeye salmon Wednesday in what has become an annual “roundup” of fish balking downstream of a cross-stream weir on the Salmon River in central Idaho’s high country.
Confident that the “B” steelhead and fall chinook salmon harvest will stay within allowable limits, state officials on Thursday approved the third commercial season of the fall season on the Columbia River mainstem for four treaty tribes – the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama.
The total “kept” sport catch for adult fall chinook salmon from the lower Columbia River (from Bonneville Dam downstream nearly 130 river miles to Oregon’s Tongue Point) during August 2012 was 7,584 fish, which is the highest catch for the month on a record dating back to at least 1969.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has issued for public review 17 updated lower Columbia River hatchery management plans aimed at assessing the affects those programs might have on wild salmon and steelhead that are protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Record sockeye salmon returns flooding the upper Columbia River region this year have allowed Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife fishery managers to extend fishing opportunity in Lake Wenatchee sockeye through Labor Day and increase the daily bag limit.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Portland District will soon start a major construction project at Foster Dam near Sweet Home, Ore., to upgrade parts of the dam’s existing adult fish collection facility, which will be a next step in an ongoing process to resurrect salmon populations long cut off from the Willamette River headwaters.
Glacier National Park officials are proposing a lake trout removal project on Logging Lake and continued lake trout netting work on Quartz Lake, both of which are connected to Montana’s Flathead Lake and river system.
Following a special Tuesday meeting the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission agreed to a gubernatorial request that legal rulemaking be launched with the aim rewriting state fishing regulations to outlaw the use of gill-nets on the mainstem Columbia River by non-tribal commercial fishermen.
A bill that would “protect America’s dams and promote new clean, low-cost hydropower to help create jobs and grow the economy” was the focus of a federal legislative field hearing Wednesday in Pasco, Wash.
Fall chinook salmon returns to the Columbia-Snake river system seem to be tracking as expected but upriver summer steelhead numbers are lower than expected as tribal fishers head out to the river for their first commercial fisheries of the fall season.
Fisheries officials say that the estimated total recreational fishing “handle” of 20,451 steelhead trout during July on the lower Columbia River mainstem from Bonneville Dam down to the mouth is the highest on a record dating back to at least 1969.
Starting Sept. 1, anglers will be able to catch and keep hatchery fall chinook salmon as well as hatchery steelhead on the Snake River.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released the findings of a comprehensive scientific review of 19 salmon and steelhead hatchery programs currently operating in the Central Valley of California and on the Klamath and Trinity Rivers.
An international group of more than 30 researchers this week gave a score to every coastal nation on their contribution to the health of the world’s oceans, which showed the United States as being slightly above average, and identified food provision, tourism and recreation as leading concerns.
A recently published scientific research paper says the ongoing broodstock mixing system, which started with just a handful of fish, has managed quite well to preserve the genetic diversity of a Snake River sockeye salmon population that teetered on the brink of extinction in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In an Aug. 9 letter to the state’s top fish and wildlife official, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber laid out his point-by-point plan for easing tensions between Columbia River sport and commercial fishermen and providing more fish for all, while at the same time building on efforts to recover protected salmon and steelhead stocks.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Tuesday gave the go-ahead for planning and explorations related to a hatchery proposal that aims to both boost spring chinook salmon returns to the upper Salmon River drainage in south-central Idaho and supplement Yellowstone trout stocks there to provide more fishing opportunities.
Most people think of seafood as either wild or farmed, but in fact both categories may apply to the fish you pick up from your grocery store. In recent years, for example, as much as 40 percent of the Alaskan salmon catch originated in fish hatcheries, although it may be labeled “all wild, never farmed.”
The Snake River sockeye salmon return this year to central Idaho pales, in a relative sense, to the last four years’ runs.
But at 429 and counting at the lower Snake River’s Lower Granite Dam, the number of spawners is still the fifth best since 1977 for a beleaguered stock that came very close to winking out in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife this week adopted temporary rules closing the upper reaches of the Sandy River to the harvest of summer steelhead through Aug. 31 largely as a means of protecting threatened chinook salmon that ply the waters.
Northwest Indian tribes sharing of any given year’s bounty has precedent. But 2012 might be unique – the Colville tribes of central Washington in one outreach traded a small portion of an overflow harvest of sockeye salmon for buffalo meat provided by the Shoshone-Bannock tribes of central and southeast Idaho.
It’s back to the drawing board… maybe… for a plan to employ small, remote-controlled aircraft – drones — as tools to battle the winds of the lower Hells Canyon, and, at the same time, produce accurate accounts of how many Snake River fall chinook salmon are seeding spawning grounds.
A fish marking practice commonly used in Washington and Oregon could significantly increase wild salmon populations in California, while allowing continued harvest of abundant hatchery populations, according to a recent study published in Marine and Coastal Fisheries.
The Columbia River Compact on Thursday approved non-tribal fisheries, directed primarily at fall chinook salmon, that begin Aug. 5 in the lower river mainstem from Bonneville downstream 146 miles to the mouth of the river.
Fish “jumping like popcorn” in recent days have signaled that anadromous steelhead trout are taking advantage of the opportunity to access White Salmon River habitat long blocked off by the presence of Condit Dam.
The Oregon Elections Division this week announced a proposed ballot initiative aimed at banning commercial gill-net fishing in the state’s waters in the Columbia River and other inland areas will be up for voter judgment this fall.
The Yakama Nation today celebrated the 16th anniversary of operations at its Cle Elum Supplementation and Research Facility, a central Washington facility designed to rear hatchery fish that the tribes feel are better adapted to survive and reproduce in the wild.
Leaders from Bonneville Power Administration, other federal and state agencies, and Northwest tribes have signed an agreement supporting increased cooperation and information sharing to better protect Pacific lLamprey, a troubled Northwest native species.
Anglers and sport-fishing charters off the California coast are returning to the docks with full boats and happy customers as the strong ocean salmon bite continues, making 2012 one of the best salmon seasons in years.
The 2012 sockeye salmon return to the Columbia River is far and away the best dating back to 1923, though the Snake River component of that run is not as strong as expected.
A good news/not-so-good news summer sockeye salmon fishing season has, for the most part, ended on the Columbia River mainstem along the Oregon-Washington border with impacts at or above limits imposed to protect, primarily, endangered Snake River fish.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
